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Survey on Gun-Carrying Youth Adds Fodder to Stop-and-Frisk Debate

By Sam Roberts April 15, 2013 12:49 pmApril 15, 2013 12:49 pm

Here’s more grist for the debate over whether the New York Police Department stops and frisks too many young members of minority groups: Among high school students in the city, more black and Hispanic young men than white young men said in a federal survey that they had carried a gun at least once in the previous month.

Other variables figure in the stop-and-frisk metric, of course, like descriptions of criminal suspects by victims and witnesses and the demography of neighborhoods in which the police are responding to a crime or where they are monitoring furtive behavior.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted locally by health and education agencies, introduces a bit of statistical evidence from the youngsters themselves.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly this month cited figures from 2011 and earlier surveys as support for actions taken in New York City: the percentage of gun-toting teenagers in New York declined between 2001 and 2011 and was smaller than in any other major American city, which the mayor and commissioner said was a result of the local laws against gun possession and of the department’s aggressive policing.

Unmentioned were details of who admits to carrying guns. According to the centers’ 2011 survey of several thousand high school students in New York City, 4.6 percent of black, 4.2 percent of Hispanic and 1.9 percent of non-Hispanic white young men said they had carried a gun at least once within the past 30 days.

Critics expressed skepticism about the results, saying they may have been skewed because some youngsters were probably boasting about being armed while others, fearing prosecution, may have falsely denied carrying a weapon. Moreover, dropouts or others disconnected from the school system might be more likely to have access to a gun.

“Research indicates data of this nature may be gathered as credibly from adolescents as from adults,” countered a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control, Brittany Raines. “Internal reliability checks help identify the small percentage of students who falsify their answers.”

Apprised of the racial and ethnic disparity in the survey, John Feinblatt, the mayor’s chief policy adviser, said: “The data is clear. In New York City, young minority males are more likely to report carrying a gun than any other group. The youth themselves report this. They are also far more likely to be the victims of gun violence. It makes sense that police enforcement resources are in neighborhoods where high-risk groups are most at risk of gun violence.”

But Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing the city over the stop-and-frisk policy, countered:

“This is no different than the N.Y.P.D.’s unconstitutional — and highly disputable — claim that since black and Latino New Yorkers commit higher rates of violent crime it legally justifies stopping a grossly disproportionate number of black or Latino individuals. The law requires individualized suspicion based on specific facts. Otherwise you are simply harassing innocent people based on some kind of collective punishment for the color of their skin.”

Paul J. Browne, Mr. Kelly’s chief spokesman, said the department’s strategy was not based on surveys.

“Police make stops based on reasonable suspicion, not on how surveys are conducted or answered,” Mr. Browne said. “Mayor Bloomberg was encouraged that the C.D.C. found indications that New York City teens were carrying guns less often.”

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